Reaper
by Alan Spencer
Summary: Taylor Hebert doesn't trigger in the locker, but she gains ownership of a Death Note months later.
1. I

**Reaper**

I couldn't take it anymore.

That was what passed through my mind as I headed out this hell hole as class was going on. I just, I couldn't. No matter how many times I told myself that I had to go on, that I couldn't let the trio drag me down, I couldn't do it anymore. Even waking up in the morning and convincing myself to get out of the bed was hard enough. I couldn't dress myself for school, smile at my father like nothing was wrong, try to reassure his feelings of being useless every time he expressed concern about it, about me, when I was the one suffering and go out of the house, burying my fear deep inside. Walking to Winslow. Entering the school. Enduring the stares, the giggles, the pushing, the feeling that everybody in the world thought I was worthless and feeling, truly feeling, like I really was.

It was suffocating.

I would rather die that continue like this. It wasn't the first time that suicide had passed through my mind, but this was the first time I didn't find myself repulsed by the idea and refused to even consider it out of some misguided sense of morality. Why shouldn't I do it? Unlike the locker, my suicide wouldn't be just a stain on a no existent reputation, something that they could just sweep under the rug.

The records of everything that had happened to me. All the vicious emails they had send me, with the ones who had been send from school computers clearly marked. I had everything I needed to take Winslow down with me, and my suicide would be trigger, the spark that would start everything. All it would take would be a note, and releasing it all to the internet. That I had killed myself over those things would silence most of the people who would learn of such an event and dismiss it all as an attention seeking brat making up a bunch of lies. And Dad… Dad would dedicate the rest of his life to make them pay.

That was what made me stop my train of thought. Dad. I loved him. I didn't want to make him suffer. And losing his daughter not too long after losing his wife would completely destroy him. Leaving him like that, just to make those people suffer... I didn't think it was worth it. No. I wouldn't kill myself. I would release that information into the internet today, allow it to spread. But I wouldn't kill myself.

I was startled out my thoughts. I… No, it seemed unbelievable, but I was seeing it with my own eyes. Something had fell from the sky, out of nowhere. A notebook. I approached it, slightly nervous. The beating of my heart thundered on my ears. I meant, no matter how you looked at it, that wasn't normal. Even so, I couldn't think what sort of power would be involved in this situation. Just a notebook. What would be the hidden truth behind this?

I keeled in front of it, and picked it up. It was a simple, thin black notebook. On the cover, it read 'DEATH NOTE'. I chuckled. It wasn't funny at all. With trembling hands, I opened it. Rules of the Death Note. Below it was written 'how to use it'. The first page was clearly marked. Then.

 _'The human whose name is written in this note shall die'_

I closed the notebook, feeling the beating of my heart spiking to the point that it almost hurt. With just a name, a person would die if their name was written on this note. Just like that. How absurd. And yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that it was impossible. Because, I couldn't say that it was impossible. Simple as that.

I lived in a world where superpowers were a common thing. A world which was connected to an alternate earth. The range of possibility was too wide for me to just dismiss what I had in my hands as some elaborate prank or something. Still, why could something like this be dropped here? Right. It wasn't impossible, but this propably was nothing.

Still, I slipped the notebook into my backpack.

* * *

My father was still working at this hour, but I had my own keys. Of course. Anyways, I headed straight into my room, turned on the lights and locked the door behind me. Then, I threw my backpack on the top of my bed. I opened it, took the notebook, and stared. My heart had calmed down on my way back, but now I was breathing heavily again.

I sat down in my study desk, and put the notebook on the top of it. Then, I opened it and carefully read the rules. I grabbed a pencil. The tip of it brushed against the pristine white paper as my hand shook. After the locker incident, I had thought my life was over. It could have easily be; with all that waste, I could have suffocated. I continued on as normal, boring, worthless Taylor Hebert, as if the locker incident had never happened. It was maddening. That nothing would change. That nobody cared. That I couldn't do anything.

But if this was real, I could do something for once. Change things. But, I would have to kill somebody. The rules made it clear. I couldn't use the note to control a person without them dying in the process. This notebook was the tool of a reaper, something made only to kill. I stared at the empty page.

I thought about it. There was no escape from the Bahuman Containment Centre. It was something that would cut the person from life, from the world. It was no different from killing them, really. And that was a decision accepted worldwide, even with the threat of the Endbringers to make everybody else more amicable, so to say. So were was the crime in that? Were was the crime in using this power to keep the criminals in line?

I was ready to write… but I didn't know what name to write. I thought back to yesterday's news, that murder case. A man had been arrested because he had strangled his pregnant lover to dead to shut her up, and the whole gist had been discovered. There was enough proof to say that they were right, that he had done it for sure. The man's name was Mike Harwell. I had seen his face, too. I remembered it with enough detail for it to work. Or so I thought.

A man like him. The crime he didn't think he had to worry about anymore revealed, and his life destroyed. It wouldn't be strange for somebody in such a situation to have a heart attack and die. The PRT wouldn't have any reason to suspect his dead would have to do with Parahuman powers, and since the news of the murder were so recent, I was sure his dead would be reported first thing in the morning.

I wrote his name.

The dead would happen in forty seconds. Just forty seconds. That was what the rules said. But it felt like an eternity. I wouldn't see anything even if it worked, but still, I held my breath until those seconds passed. Nothing changed. At least, nothing I could perceive. Of course.

* * *

As soon as I woke up, I headed to the living room, sat down in the sofa in front of the television, turned it on and put a random news channel. It didn't take long to show up.

"Mike Harwell died at 11: 44 PM of a heart attack." the time matched. I had wrote the name at 11: 43: 20. His time of death was exactly forty seconds after I wrote his name. The reporter kept on talking, but her words just washed over me. This was it. The Death Note was real.

Which meant that I, with my own hands, had killed a person. I felt sick, but it was only for a brief moment. I heard my teeth gritting. A person? I didn't see a person over there. All I saw was a cheating, conniving, murder who had got what was coming to him. Somebody who hadn't thought twice about fucking some other woman behind his wife's back. Then, when he got his lover pregnant he fucking strangled her to dead and buried her body in a ditch, like she was a piece of garbage. Like he had any right to do that, to step over people. Like he could get away with it.

Like Sophia.

And Emma.

And Madison.

"Good riddance." I said.


	2. II

**II**

The problem was, I thought to myself in the silence of my room, the face and the name.

Brockton Bay's main problems were the gangs. The Anz Bad Boys and the Empire Eighty were the biggest of them all. The easiest way to lessen their influence would be to kill their leaders, but the identities of Kaiser and Lung were unknown. And even if they were know to the PRT, they would be protected because of the unwritten rules. Or in the Birdcage. I thought it through, but I couldn't see any way to change the situation. Not with the power at my disposal.

But there was no use in frustrating myself with what I couldn't do, so I focused my efforts in doing what I could. I thought it through, and decided on a good course of action. It was a little frustrating that I couldn't solve this city's problems by myself even with such a power, but I had to accept my limitations. So, I set my own schedule quickly, as I was looking through the internet, checking, double checking and writing names in the note.

In the morning, I would search the internet for criminals, write them down in the note and set the date of their deads at random intervals. An hour for now, two, a day, even a month or two. It would be bad if I got hospitalized or something, and somebody connected the stopping of the deaths with that. It would bring far too much attention. It would do that for about two hours, then I would head outside and walk around, on the lookout for any crime, with pieces of the death note hidden on myself.

Of course, I wouldn't know the name of every random criminal I came across. I couldn't stop every crime, no matter how hard I tried. But I had memorized the faces and names of people with a criminal history in Brockton Bay. Maybe it was a long shot, okay yeah it was a long shot, but there was a chance I could catch a criminal in the act whose face and name I knew. At least, if I tried it I wouldn't felt like I was half assing this. It wouldn't interfere with me writing names anyway, so it was worth a shot, just in case.

I also would test the limits of the Death Note. The rules had left a lot of unanswered questions, so I didn't have any choice. Through the tests I came to realize that the note's main limitation was quite simply reality. It wouldn't bend so the events of the note happened. Rather, the note would control the person and try to ensure the events writing of the note happened. And if it wasn't possible, or if it was stopped, no matter which cause of death was written the note reverted to the default: a heart attack.

… To be honest, I could do more even with the Death Note's limitations. I knew I could, but the solution to the problem was too risky. I had been taking care to hide my activities by diversifying the causes of dead, and so far, even with a week of me operating like this, nobody had took notice there was a person behind the events. But if I stopped that and killed everybody with a heart attack, even the most idiotic person on earth would realize what was going on. And I didn't have any illusions towards what would follow.

I'm sure they would give me a name, idolize me, create a website in my name to tell the criminals name. All I would take to end the gangs would be a thug who was making a power play posting the leader's real name on said website, or somebody from the PRT, too. Couldn't rule that out, despite of how they portrayed themselves to the public. I'm sure it would be a relief that somebody would be willing to their dirty work for them.

But that would bring too much attention on me.

The fact of the matter was that, even if they wouldn't see me as a criminal, my power was terrifying. Just a face and a name. A face and a name, and even the richest, most powerful, most influential person on earth would crumble. They would seek to put me down. Even if I was doing good. So I wouldn't do that. Better that nobody knew of my existence, regardless of the advantages it would bring.

* * *

There was something. Something, I couldn't quite explain. A sudden chill. The sensation that somebody was looking at me, observing me. Like a crow. I turned around, and saw a nightmare. I very nearly screamed, but all that came out of my throat was a weak moan. I felt off the chair, and was left there, on the ground, helpless, staring at a monster.

Lean frame, body covered by black feathers. Pale like death. Wide red eyes. Half open mouth, crooked teeth. I only had a feeling, but at that moment, I was sure. This thing was the real master of the notebook I had been using. A twisted Parahuman. Death itself. Whatever.

A part of me told me that it was stupid to be afraid of it, that it was obvious that it didn't want to do anything to me. But that it could have easily kill me, that it had entered my room and simply stood there, waiting for me to turn around to give me a scare, didn't meant shit. It could be playing with me, scare me a little more, give me false hope and then kill me. It wasn't hard to imagine.

I picked myself up, without taking my eyes off of it. I might look calm to him, might. But my heart was beating so hard that it hurt.

"What do you want?"

"Oh," god, even its voice send chills down my spine. "Going right to the point, aren't you? I'm not here to take the note back, kill you or anything like that. I'm not going to take your soul, either. I'm just here to watch interesting things."

"You meant, you let me have this, use it… just like that?"

"That's exactly what I said. Listen, girl. I'm a Shinigami." Shinigami? I knew they were death in Japanese mythology, sort of, but not much else. My first impulse was too dismiss its words as a lie, but I couldn't do that. I knew fully well that this thing in front of my was not human, and in any case, as far as I knew, the Death Note didn't fit within the system of powers. I had know since the beginning that there was something like this. I had just be unwilling to think about it. "I have no reason to betray you. I dropped my note into the human world, into this dimension, because I was bored. That's all. I wanted a change of peace. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not here to help you, either. I'm just going to watch and let things run their course."

"Why did you chose me?"

"Chose you?" it laughed. "Man, are all humans that arrogant? I chose this city because it is a cape hotspot, and I dropped it in Winslow because is the shittier school here. That you ended up as the owner of the note was pure chance, girl."

"And what if I said I didn't want this note? What if I chose to stop indulging your whims? What then?"

"You're thinking I would kill you." it wasn't a question. "Heh. In the case that you gave up your ownership of the note, then I would take it back, and your memories of anything to do with it. That's all. I would leave you to live your life, and drop the note again, see what happens. Nothing more."

"That's..."

"In any case, I pretty sure you don't want to give it up. You wouldn't have wrote so many names, otherwise."

I whirled around, but I stopped myself. There was no use in hiding it, but I still felt irrationally ashamed of what I had done. Sleeping…. Sleeping had become a problem. I only killed criminals, I only killed those who deserved to die, and yet the guilt gnawed away at me. I hardly sleep, and when I did it was a thin sleep filled with horrible nightmares. In the day I was good, but at night I couldn't help but tremble with a deep, irrational fear. As if I expected the corpses of the people I killed to come and drag me down into hell.

"You said you wouldn't help me. Does that include answering my questions?"

"I'm willing to answer your questions. Just not always. And also, I going tell you things you need to know. For example. Don't let anybody touch that note. You see, normally nobody is capable of perceiving me at all, except for owner of the note. However, if another person touches the note, they would be able to see me and heard me like you do."

I nodded. That was useful to know. I would to be careful even with the scraps of paper I keep hidden on myself when I went out.

"One more thing. There's more to the Death Note's power that what you have be able to do, so far."

"What do you meant?" my heartbeat was going into overdrive, and I felt rotten in place. Of course. That didn't sound like it would have anything good in store for me. It sounded like I would be forced to sacrifice something in exchange for power. But still… I wanted to heard it. If there was more, some way to bypass the rules about having to know the name and face, I wanted to heard it.

"The eyes of a Shinigami. In exchange for half of your lifespan, I can give you the power to know a person's real name just by looking at them or a photo of them. If you wish."

"Half of my lifespan?"I shallowed. It wasn't as bad as the wild possibilities I had come up with. To begin with, I would have to do anything bad. "What is my lifespan?"

"Sorry, sorry. Not saying."

It would only take half of my lifespan. The problem was, I didn't know my own lifespan, but still. It was worth it. All the problems I had would vanish in an instant. I could change the world. With that, I could really change the world. That I would give up half of my life was insignificant, compared to that. Yes.

There was no need to think about it.

"I accept this deal." I said.

At my words, its laughter resounded in the room.


End file.
